I started a small group for teenage girls/young ladies two weeks ago. My heart is so heavy for that age group...it has grown even heavier since living in Swaziland.

I had found a five week series about Godly young women which answers a few main questions that seemed a great start to open dialogue with the young women here in Nsoko:

   *What comes out of a Godly woman's mouth?

   *How does a Godly woman dress/look like/act?

   *Who does a Godly woman love?

   *What is on a Godly woman's heart?

  * How does she remain pure?

   *Where does a Godly woman put her trust and hope?

It was very encouraging, that at the second meeting last Friday, there were  27 young women present. There seemed to be a real keen interest in the material and we had some great discussion! I left that meeting feeling excited, happy and (yes) a bit proud...that I seemed to have hit on a nerve and opened up a dialogue!

Then, over the weekend there was a funeral in the community. We hadn't heard too much about it until after the fact. As more information became clear, however, the heaviness in my heart became like a boulder. The deceased was a teenage girl...she had become pregnant...again...and went to one of the tribal 'healers' for a concoction to...again...abort the baby growing within her. Both she and the baby died as a result.

But there is more!

She had two sisters...who also have died trying to abort unwanted pregnancies...

Such hopelessness...such despair...

SUCH DARKNESS...

I am left asking...

"Lord, why didn't You stop this?"

"Lord, why couldn't I have been put in this young girl's path?"

I am haunted by...

"Lord, DID I cross paths with this young girl and write it off as just another teen mother in Swaziland?"

It is too easy to become jaded and cynical in this culture. So many young girls walking around pregnant, with another little one slung on their back! So many youth deemed failures by a failing education system with nothing but time and hormones on their side...casual sex is a daily fact!

But then you imagine her...

Ashamed

Alone

Desperate

Deceived